Коммуникация в области здоровья и здравоохранения: традиционные подходы и новая реальность (курс на английском языке)
Факультет государственного управления

The COVID-19 pandemic has already demonstrated that health communication has turned into a top priority of our modern society. It is a sure thing that being multidisciplinary in nature it turned into an essential knowledge for everyone in the daily lives. It assists in understanding the decision taking, modern media and health representations, and what is more important, it enables the profound analysis of the current situation.

The course covers the fundamentals of communication with the most influential theories and their modifications. The issues of time, space and contexts are mentioned in respect of application to health communication. The modern concept of digital divide and digital inequalities provide the key to understanding the patterns of behavior. The course is focused on the analysis of the modification of all traditional approaches to understanding health and health communication within the times of COVID-19 pandemic.

Needless to say, all people are living in total uncertainty and have to find their ways in taking vital decisions, thus the decisions are usually grounded on information that is usually obtained online. We also study the approaches to understanding who and how searches health-related information online, and how these trends have been modified during COVID-19 pandemic. It should be mentioned that we observe the evolution of the health communication as a field that is influenced greatly by technological advances. The latter provides the opportunities that look very promising for the field of health communication; however, they pose also new challenges in terms of ethics and privacy.